I've read where the Air Force is looking for a new commander to run the service's basic training, here at Lackland.

A suggestion: Hire a woman. The right one.

Maybe you already have someone in mind. If it's a man — even a gung-ho, kick-butt, take-names hard charger — change your mind.

Yes, I know. Women in senior positions can make mistakes, too. But I'm thinking they won't be as prone to making the same kinds of mistakes that have allowed a culture in which female recruits were so often preyed upon by training instructors.

Such a culture involves not just the willful actions of the abuser, but the willful blind eye by others.

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It's hard to escape the conclusion that just such a culture has been allowed to exist at basic training at Lackland.

The more recent numbers kind of speak for themselves. That would be 17 basic training instructors suspected of being involved with 43 women in basic and technical training. Two trainers were involved with 10 women each. And experts say only about 14 percent of such cases get reported.

We know this because of some intrepid reporting by the Express-News' Sig Christenson and Karisa King.

They reported other numbers last Sunday, detailing instructors between September 2002 and December 2011, who faced administrative or criminal charges stemming from such abuses previously.

All of those relationships, the Air Force said, were consensual.

Bunk. There can be no such thing between an instructor and a trainee.

Just a bit of irony here: Some of these newly revealed incidents occurred when now Maj. Gen. Mary Kay Hertog commanded the 37th Training Wing, which oversees the 737th Training Group, the basic training outfit. But I'm asking for the actual basic training commander to be a woman.

Question: So, the Pentagon and Air Force were savvy enough to appoint women to respond and investigate but not to run basic military training?

You might be thinking that what I'm suggesting here is just about atmospherics.

No. You see, a woman in my experience is less likely to be tolerant of this good-ol'-boy, boys-just-being-boys attitude that seems to pervade the, shall we say, testosterone-laden professions. And this will be particularly true when they are faced with outrageous circumstances and are directly responsible for basic training.

Yes, I've been in the military.

Besides, now that this abuse is out in the open, in whom do you think potential female recruits and trainees will be more confident? A man or a woman?

Right. Military men also have mothers, wives and daughters. Respectful and ethical behavior is actually the norm.

But if your thing is exerting power for sexual gratification, can you think of a more dangerous place for such a person to work than in an institution in which authority is routinely exerted and obedience routinely expected? A more dangerous place than basic training, where such factors are magnified?

Chances are a woman will understand this with more clarity than others.